Ty and Statistical Improbabilities

Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 12, 2010

My son Ty is a statistical improbability. There are so many aspects about him, that just should not be. First of all, he was born WAY premature. As a matter of fact, the people at Holt Korea had only had one child that they had worked with that was born at an earlier gestation, and that was only by one day. He was the lowest birth-weight they had dealt with, though. His stubbornness is the only reason that he is alive. Being born that early, he was at an extremely high risk for all kinds of medical issues. We got all kinds of medical documents and thought that it was almost for certain that he would have CP. He is completely healthy. If people at the US agencies had followed their processes, we should never have even got his adoption referral. My wife has chronicled all of this on her blog in some older posts. Anyway, he continues this trend today.

Ty is extremely stubborn, which is probably why is is even alive.  Yes, I consider this irony. We often joke that he got his stubbornness from my side of the family. Fortunately, I win most battles of the stubborn. However, there are some that it seems that I will never win. For instance, you would think that he would put his shoes on the right feet at least 50% of the time. No. It is more like 1% of the time. Perhaps his jacket on with the hood facing the sky, not the ground. Nope! He is 3 and no matter how many times I have to correct him, he still eats anything that is flat (pizza, cookies, bagels, etc…) with the flat side facing his mouth. For some reason, he does not correlate this to why there is pizza in his hair or peanut butter on his nose and under his chin.  Oh well, I hope my stubbornness out lasts his!

On a side note about these improbablities, is it just me or when there are multiple light switches on a wall together do you always seem to flip the up the wrong one?